


Too Much, Not Enough

by amare



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha!Steve, Alpha/Beta, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Beta!Bucky, First Time, Hand Jobs, Knotting, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, set during The First Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:11:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1919412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amare/pseuds/amare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would probably leave Steve sore and demoralized if he knew how much Bucky values what he can do for him. This is more of the same. He has to, and he wants to. The two are indistinguishable. (Alpha!Steve goes into his first rut.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Much, Not Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to have a theme when it comes to Steve/Bucky and A/B/O fics—the serum turning omega!Steve into an alpha. This is a decidedly different take than Sea Change, and isn't connected to that verse at all, but I guess I wanted another go at the dynamic.

It's the fifth time in a week that Steve's run off during the middle of something—dinner, a hand of poker, and once in the middle of a briefing. Steve, when he was a walking petri dish of illness, only ever excused himself when he was about to be the cause of an epidemic or on the verge of passing out where he stood. Now, his sudden and vague reasons for needing to be elsewhere ("coffee didn't sit right, I guess" and "I think the altitude is making me nauseous" the most memorable, delivered out the side of his mouth, Steve's guileless eyes cutting to Morita and feigning interest in his bad cartoons, reassuringly still the same shit liar he always was) are even queerer. 

This time, Bucky does what any self-respecting best friend-cum-sidekick would do; he tails Steve back to his private tent, staying downwind in case Steve's olfactory upgrade was as thorough as he suspects. Normally he wouldn't encroach on Steve's privacy, but thing is, privacy is a concept that's been shaky for them since the get-go. They shared a bedroom for a year until they could afford better, for Chrissakes. There's nothing Bucky doesn't know about that kid, and Steve only gets het up if Bucky messes up his stuff or startles him when he's in the john. 

Still, he gives a courtesy cough outside the flaps of the tent before ducking inside. It's been raining on and off all day, and stagnant water from the tent catches the top of Bucky's hair, sliding down his neck like slimy fingertips. He wrinkles his nose and wipes it away, squinting in the dim light that one lantern offers to see Steve's hulking silhouette. 

"What was it this time? Did Dum Dum's jokes give you indigestion?" Bucky asks with cheery belligerence. 

Steve whirls around, caught out, so pale Bucky can see it even in this light. His mouth is hanging open, and Bucky can hear his labored breathing. His civvies are all rucked up, jacket half unzipped. When Bucky's eyes adjust a little quicker than they should—one of the few effects from his time with Zola that he finds useful more than he lets bug him—he sees that Steve's undone his belt. 

First he thinks he must have been jerking off, but Steve's never needed to bolt away to take care of business. He's been in this body for, what, nearly three years now, and this development is new, so he can't be adjusting to new and exciting hormones. This isn't ordinary masturbation, or Steve would have yelled at him to scram by now. 

"You all right?" he asks, concerned.  
  
"I'm—" Steve says, desperately, swallowing and glancing around before his eyebrows draw together in a picture of misery. "I think I'm in rut."  
  
Bucky whistles low. "This your first?" he asks sympathetically, though he can guess. 

They put Steve in as a knobbly omega, spat him back out as something more _useful_ , something that could _contribute_ the way he always wanted to. Bucky gets the impression that after Erskine died, they were happy to send him into the world without much more than an awkward pat on the back. No briefings on how to handle his new status, just relegated him to shilling bonds until Steve found another way to escape the expectations others put on him. 

It's not like designation changes are unheard of, not in this day and age. Science moves fast enough to keep up with imagination, but even Stark and Erskine never sunk to the depths that Hydra has in their attempt to reach so-called genetic perfection. They like to boast that the SS is a pack of expertly trained, pure Aryan alphas, but Bucky's shot more than a few of them and can name a beta when he sees one. 

"Yeah, I mean, I'm not even sure." 

Bucky pulls a wry face when he sees Steve's hand inching closer to his groin. "That seems pretty obvious, bud. You knotted yet?"  
  
Steve's eyelashes flutter and he bites his lip to keep in the sound Bucky sees working in his throat. Damn. He's in it bad. There's a prickling heat at the back of Bucky's neck, sympathetic, a little fascinated. He's never seen an alpha in first rut before. Never in any rut, actually. Bucky didn't make a habit of palling around with alphas before the Commandos, and most of them in Brooklyn had something to prove. Bucky got into enough trouble thanks to Steve's mouth and his own posturing to sour him on the idea, but when moved out of his parent's place and shacked up with Steve, he got curious and foolish with newfound freedom enough to get to know one. Intimately. 

Rut can happen any time an alpha's wound up enough from prolonged exposure to omegas or a particularly compatible beta, even. Heats can trigger it, but most omegas keep to themselves when they feel that coming on. Contrary to those schmaltzy novels Bucky's ma hid poorly around their house, alphas don't turn into mindlessly aroused (and yet respectfully tender) beasts—they still have enough sense to live their lives, especially if they knot as soon as it hits and get it out of their system. 

But first rut is something else entirely. It comes during puberty, and it sounds like a mess, even painful if parents aren't around to give the requisite lecture on how to handle knots. And Steve's getting his first one—his first _knot_ , he thinks with clarity that squirms around low in his belly—in the middle of a war and at age twenty-six. He's barely kissed a dame and now he's fighting primordial sex urges. No wonder he's acting weird.  
  
"You know what to expect?" he says, as mild as he can manage. "They say it gets worse before it gets better."

"I feel like my skin's gonna split open," Steve says. There's a look of panic in his eyes he's determinedly keeping restrained, and the furrow is still between his brows. It's an expression that always yanks Bucky into whatever bullshit Steve's gotten himself into.  
  
"You gotta take care of it. It isn't like normal jerking off. It's not going to go away if you say twenty Hail Marys, Steve." 

Steve stops looking fraught for a few seconds, long enough to look exasperated. "I know that. I just—I didn't go into rut on tour, and I guess I thought…"  
  
"You didn't need to worry about it?" 

Steve nods.  
  
This may be the most bizarre conversation they've had, outside of _they put me in a machine and it hurt like the blazes but then I came out a six foot tall Adonis, and then there was this funny costume that made me sort of resemble a prophylactic_ —Bucky might have forgotten some of the finer details of that exchange, but not the out of body feeling of disbelief. He's feeling the same thing now. His palms are starting to sweat. Needy, virgin alpha ten feet in front of him, confounded by his own body. That jaw-clenched expression that does Bucky in. 

It wasn't like there had been anyone else to tell standoffish, too-serious Steve Rogers what masturbation was—aside from his blurry understanding of it as a sin, that is. When they were twelve, he told Steve to _stop rubbing against the mattress because it makes the springs squeak and anyone walking by your bedroom could hear_ , and that maybe he shouldn't put that sort of pressure on his lungs. Then when they were fourteen, he told him to _use your whole hand and not just two fingers, Steve, Jesus and Mary, your dick's bigger than that_. Eighteen when he left those special omega condoms on his pillow, just in case he was getting any ideas. Steve looked appropriately mortified and annoyed every time, but he seemed to take Bucky's help for what it was. _Use spit. Use petroleum jelly, if you can get it. Your mom keeps some under the sink. Dames like it if you last more than three minutes.  
_

Now he's gotta tell him, with his patchwork knowledge of first ruts and his sketchy, one-time back alley encounter with a knot, how to get himself through this. 

Bucky gives a firm, decisive exhale through his nose and shrugs his coat off in case things get messy. When he steps closer, Steve's posture straightens and stiffens up, even though the hard line of him in his trousers hasn't wavered. If anything, he's harder now than when Bucky walked in. He telegraphs confusion even when Bucky's toe to toe with him, watching him steadily. 

"What are you doing?" Steve asks. His broad chest is rising and falling, rising and falling, no hitches or shudders of pain, not even a hint of a gasp. 

"Giving you a hand," Bucky says, smiling winningly, and pops Steve's button open. 

He slides said hand under the band of army reg underwear, his fingers catching briefly in Steve's surprisingly soft pubic hair, and hesitates, getting a read on Steve before he goes any further. This isn't a sacrifice for him—hell, considering the way he's full mast in his own pants and the heady beat of his own heart, this might be as much for Bucky as it is for Steve—but he doesn't want to do something Steve isn't keen on. They can and have come back from a lot, but shifting the paradigm of their friendship might not be the best idea, come of think of it. 

But Steve's searching his face with clear blue eyes, lower lip shiny when he licks it reflexively. "Do you want—" 

"'Course I want," Bucky says, maybe too softly. "You know it's been my life's dream to break in an alpha." He uses his other hand to resume whatever it is they're doing and works Steve's pants down a little. 

Steve chuffs. His warm breath hits Bucky's face, and he resists turning into it, showing his neck some. "You don't have to," he says, earnest. 

Bucky can't agree or deny—it's too honest if he does either way. He can't tell Steve that _choice_ isn't a word he has when it comes to him. He helps Steve. It's what he does. It's shameful how much he likes helping Steve, and in fact it would probably leave Steve sore and demoralized if he knew how much Bucky values—valued—what he could do for him. This is more of the same. He has to, and he wants to. The two are indistinguishable. 

"Lemme help," Bucky says eventually, curling his fingers until Steve's hot and nestled in his palm. Just the base of him. 

Steve hisses when his hand, questing, moves down, and his hips buck. "Oh, no, don't, it hurts." 

He's perplexed for a moment until he remembers how sore the first knot is. Like a tooth coming in, maybe. Sore and hot, and Steve's popping his first knot in Bucky's hand. "It's supposed to," he says, bracing Steve with a hand to his back. Steve curves into Bucky's body, but he leaves space between their hips. He's looking down at Bucky's hand, still hidden in his briefs. "It hurts till you put pressure on it," he says, stroking so careful and light under the head, right where he can feel the feverish patch of Steve's gradual inflation. 

Steve breathes directly against Bucky's neck, and when he lets himself think that maybe he's smelling him, chills chase themselves down his back. "Buck, it hurts," he says, soft and baffled but without a quaver to his voice. 

"It's because you're supposed to breed," Bucky says. He's breathing too hard himself. He can hear it in his own voice, like he's strangled. "The first time, they say you're supposed to squeeze it like you're fucking." 

Steve groans as Bucky tightens his fist around the head of his cock and a little further down. He feels the jump as blood fills it, as he gets Steve's knot to pop up all the way. It's nothing like jerking himself off, which is basically his only frame of reference. The swollen knot in Bucky's palm makes him grit his teeth. 

"Is that better?" he asks, rhythmically tightening his fist until his knuckles strain.  
  
"Oh, God." Steve's mouth is perpetually open now, and Bucky can feel his lips a millimeter or so away from his skin. It's somehow more immediate than the knowledge and feel of Steve's cock in his hand, sticky and bulging in his fingers. 

"Yeah. You wanna see, Steve?" He brings his hand up and gets Steve entirely free from his underwear. "I'd take my hand off so you could get a better look, but I think it'd hurt." 

"Don't stop," Steve pleads, groaning into Bucky's skin. 

"That's it." It's a struggle to keep his eyes open, to stay focused and not just sink into it and drift along until it ends. He's overheated, he should have taken off more than just his damn jacket, but that would take this from helping Steve to something unclassifiable and insidious. _Christ_ , though, it's something to feel him. Giving Steve pleasure, relief, is enough to make Bucky feel like he's floating on a cloud, but he hadn’t expected his body to respond the way it's doing. 

Makes sense, though. Potent alpha in rut. Bucky's a pretty atypical beta (his file says a lot about _posturing_ and _in denial of his status_ ), but even he isn't immune to the sight, smell, and sound of a man literally designed by science to embody power, authority. Potency. On a base level, this does it for him, so much more than that overbearing alpha had, even when his teeth were scraping the back of Bucky's neck and he was sliding in. Bucky wonders if it's that it's Steve, but then, of course it's Steve. 

"Seems a shame to waste your first knot on a handjob."

He knows Steve well enough to read the silence—he can't form words, he's close or overwhelmed and just that taken aback by Bucky's suggestion. He continues like Steve's actually said _what on earth are you talking about?_ instead of just panted against his neck and valiantly tried to keep his noises to himself.

"It'd feel so good, like it's supposed to. God, you've got me raring to go, ain't like it'd be a hardship." He laughs a little, but it's unsteady. "You thinkin' about it? Shooting off your knot inside somebody?"  
  
Steve whines and then catches it by snapping his mouth shut so fast his teeth click. Bucky hears him forcing his ragged breathing in and out of his nose.

"Hey, no, it's fine. It's good." He croons into the shell of Steve's ear, squeezing real tight for an encouraging second. "If you want, I'm—" _game_ , he nearly says, but Steve's not gonna do a thing if Bucky's presents it like a favor, even neutrally. "I'm so goddamn hard, Steve," he says, voice cracking, and Steve rubs his square jaw, its hint of stubble, against Bucky's. 

"There's jelly in my bag," he says tightly, pulling away to look at him. He's so serious even now. "You have to do it soon, though, I'm—" 

"Yeah." 

It's the last thing they say for a while. Steve makes an unhappy noise when Bucky disengages his vice grip to look for the petroleum, but then he eagerly—albeit one-handedly, as the other is firmly wrapped around his dick—opens Bucky's pants and shoves them down to his knees. He doesn't seem satisfied and keeps tugging until Bucky's wrenching off his boots too, then kicking away the pants. 

He stutters to a halt when he's got Bucky mostly naked and bracing himself against a shelf. The jelly's been liberated, and he holds it in his free hand. He's not an idiot, and only maybe two-thirds the prude people seem to think he is, so when Bucky glances over his shoulder, he sees Steve puzzle out something important. 

"I don't need too much. Two fingers?" Bucky guesses. 

Steve looks down at Bucky's bare ass, then the jelly jar in his hand, and then finally the firm hand he has around himself. He frowns. 

"Give me the damn thing," Bucky says. His hands aren't as steady as he'd like as he unscrews the lid and smears his fingers. 

He didn't do this part himself. He doesn't tend to go poking around back there—his time with the other alpha was an aberration, the folly of horny youth. Now, with Steve, he doesn't want there to be guilt because they went too fast and Bucky limped around camp for the next two days. He's heard enough to know how it's supposed to go, if they both want it to be good. The knot'll ache no matter what, but good slick and a bit of opening himself up helps. 

He tucks his thumb while he pushes two testing fingers inside. It's a burn and a stretch, but it's not a whole dick going in at once, and Steve's breathing is changing again behind him. He puts one hand on Bucky's hip, half on the material of his shirt and half on bare skin. Bucky works at himself slowly and steadily until he feels some give, like he isn't just jamming his fingers into a tight screw. Not the sexiest feeling in the world, but he knows what's coming—Steve giving him his first knot—and that terrifying feeling of mindlessness won't be so terrifying if it's Steve and not a stranger. 

Thinking about it just makes his body want it more. Biology's a nifty trick; not even a few minutes pass before Bucky's nudging a third finger in, sighing at how it sinks in. Weird but good. He might not try it again, though, not if it's the main event instead of a prelude. 

"Does it hurt?" Steve asks, big hand parting him a little. 

"Nope," Bucky says, not even lying now. He slips his fingers out so Steve can look his fill at what he's getting. His back arches when Steve reaches for the jelly and takes some to slick himself. "Knot might smart a bit, but breeding hormones kick in and apparently I'll be drooling for it." 

"Apparently," Steve murmurs, because he's a punk. Then, "Tell me if it hurts," as he rubs the blunt tip against Bucky's asshole. His hand is right beneath, keeping a steady grip on his knot and guiding at the same time. 

Bucky widens his stance, hoping the shelf he's up against can take this sort of weight, and the whole head slips inside just like that, pressure and slick and Bucky's latent beta tendencies rearing up enough to make this easy, natural. 

Steve's fingers hit his rim, and Bucky's biting back all sorts of words, tongue tangled to the point of immobility with them, but he manages to get across that Steve should just hurry up and put it all the way in. The way he shakes and pushes back is possibly more effective than a verbal demand. 

"Oh, you're," is all Steve says as Bucky's body takes the widest part of him. It's so hot. Bucky shouldn't be able to feel it, the difference, but he thinks he can. Once that thick knot pushes in, the rest is just a relentless slide. The stretch moves deeper, a spot Bucky just wants Steve to work over so bad, and he muffles a noise in his arm. "Buck, I want to hear," Steve says, stroking his hair. 

"The whole camp'll hear," Bucky says, flashing a glance back that doesn't quite make it to Steve. "Oh, fuck, that's so good."  
  
"Is it?" Steve asks, but his tone's like he's not surprised at all. Pleased, maybe, and he keeps touching Bucky even as he fucks him, working his hips closer. It's unsteady at first, like Steve's trying to figure out how to wield his body for this task, adjusting for their sizes that after so many months Bucky doesn't think either of them are used to, but he's always been a quick learner. 

His knot is an insistent stretch and ache he can't tune out. The thrusts Steve's giving him aren't tiny or particularly gentle, but he's not pulling back far enough to pop out. It would hurt if he did. He likes when Steve pulls back because the knot tugs at his rim; he can _feel_ his body trying to accommodate it. 

When Steve pushes forward until he's balancing on the balls of his feet, shoving Bucky against the shelf and buried so deep it seems to hit something in there, Bucky groans and wraps a hand around himself. His own cock has felt secondary to what Steve's doing, to the focal point of his knot, but he knows that Steve's got to be close. He doesn't want to be far behind. 

"Gonna give it to me, Steve? Christ, you're huge. It's so good, I swear, never had anything like it." 

He says other stuff too, and Steve seems to like it by the way he moans into Bucky's ear and nips the top of it, the bruising grip his fingers have on Bucky's hips. It's all lost to the increasing blurriness of Bucky's vision, the firm, visceral knowledge that he's getting bred properly for the first time in his fucking life, and that it's Steve's cock and knot that's doing it. 

Steve shudders before he comes and then locks up, gasping Bucky's name and wrapping his arms around his waist until there's no space between them. Bucky makes a choking sound and comes over his own wrist on the third pulse. He loses track of where and when he is, and this time it isn't scary. It's just the tight clench of his body milking each spurt out of Steve, the two of them locked together. 

Steve isn't done for a while, first rut and all, and Bucky floats along. His eyes could be open or closed, he doesn't know which. He becomes aware, eventually, of Steve mouthing over the back of Bucky's sweaty neck. No teeth. Just smooth, full lips and reverence. He shivers, and Steve takes that as his cue to pull back and pull out. 

His come starts to slip out a few seconds later, and Steve makes a noise and puts himself together to find something to clean them up with. While he works, he avoids Bucky's gaze but goes about cleaning up with efficiency and steady hands. His jaw isn't clenched or anything like that; his expression is too soft to suggest that he's upset. 

It takes Bucky quite a bit longer than that to get himself together. He knew what he was getting into, or he thought he did, and if he'd put money down, he'd have assumed the aftermath would be strange. His body is flushed with euphoria, a little sore, not too bad, but his brain is teetering between sated and happy and overanalyzing what it means that he feels this good, that he let himself come untethered without any hesitation, and what Steve could be thinking. 

"You should lie down," Steve says. 

Bucky somehow walks over to Steve's cot. Steve's wiped the worst of the mess from him, but he still feels open and wet. Before he sits down, he finds his pants from the floor—they weren't his uniform, so he doesn't feel too bad about it—and works them over his bruised hips. 

"You okay?" he asks into the quiet while Steve goes about straightening things up.

Steve pushes back his bangs and looks at him, level but soft. "Yeah, Buck, I'm good." 

That's that, Bucky thinks, nodding to himself. He gave Steve something, Steve took it, and he's good. He can't ask for more than that. 

But then Steve clears his throat and says, "Uh, thank you. For that." 

That settles like weight over Bucky's shoulders, and he shrugs one of them in response, quirking a smile. "I think under the circumstances I should be thanking you, pal," he says, lifting both eyebrows and trying to look satiated instead of hollowed out. 

Steve looks dubious but unsure, and he smiles hesitantly after a moment. "I'm just glad I could fulfill your lifelong dream." 

Bucky laughs and excuses himself to make sure the rest of the guys didn't hear them fuck like teenagers. They didn't, although Gabe's nose twitches like he either smells Steve's come on him or like he wants to laugh. Bucky keeps his walk as normal as possible and helps himself to the rest of the pot of coffee. 

\-- 

He can shake the sex. It isn't that he let Steve fuck him, that he helped him out in this particular way—but that Steve thanked him like he'd brought in the mail, or finished a fight he'd started, or picked up dinner for the night. Like this was another part of having each other's backs. 

But wasn't it? If it isn't that, what is it? Bucky keeps up patrol the next day with a stubborn set to his jaw and keeps the patter light as he chastises himself for showing his hand so much. Showing his hand and Steve didn’t even see it. Fuck, _Bucky_ didn't even see it until he was bending over for Steve like a fairy cruising the docks on leave. He always tells himself the same shit, _I'm doing this for Steve_ , but he knows he's a selfish bastard when the warm rush of pleasure over Steve's reaction, Steve's acknowledgement, hits him later. Every time. 

This isn't different. He's a selfish bastard, and he wanted Steve's rut the second he knew about it. He can say he did it for Steve, to ease him into how good it could be, but in reality he was just— 

He had other reasons. 

Steve's nearly as quiet as Bucky, but he's still friendly between his serious moments of giving orders. They do a circuit of the camp together, as they always do, before they settle in for dinner. 

Dum Dum is moaning about how he hasn't seen an omega in _weeks_ , and everyone rolls their eyes as he bemoans his luck. Gabe says that at this rate, an _Aufseherinnen_ could put him into a rut, which no one finds funny, least of all Bucky, who stops chewing altogether and nearly lets his fork clatter to the ground. He firms his grip on it, though, and ducks his head down to finish his slop. 

He doesn't say anything else through dinner, and even though the Commandos are used to him going silent and cold for a few hours at a time, or even staring off into the middle distance if he's especially unsettling that day, they give him more space than usual. It's not that Bucky's somewhere else; he's too present, too aware of him and Steve, who is as usual at his elbow. He doesn't dart Bucky any worried looks or offer him a second helping, like he does when he's worried. 

Steve's acting normal, and it's one of the worst acting jobs Bucky's ever seen, even if he's the only one who'd notice. He makes it through dinner, two cigarettes, and waits until Steve's retired to his tent to consult his maps for the fortieth fucking time that week. 

Steve glances up when Bucky lets himself in. There's no courtesy cough this time, and Bucky's eerily light on his feet when he wants to be now. He's almost impressed Steve spotted him before he called attention to himself. 

"I'm probably making this weirder than it has to be," Bucky admits. Steve's hair is damp, tooth marks from his comb still in it. 

"Okay." Steve knows what Bucky's there to talk about, doesn't play dumb. He braces his hands on the papers spread out in front of him. "Do you want to talk about it?" 

"Nope. But, uh, can you tell me something?" 

"Sure." 

"It was your first rut, right?" Bucky closes some of the distance between them. He could read Steve's face from twenty paces, easy, but there's already a figurative distance gnawing at him; he doesn't need a literal one too. His heartbeat is pretty steady, even as he gets the mettle to ask, "What caused it?" 

Steve's eyes flash fear for one second, but then his chin lifts. "You," he says with his usual simple honesty, even though he looks like he'd rather be saying anything else. He ducks his chin down to look at his hands, his maps, and glances back up. "Apparently we're compatible." He looks at Bucky, his mouth a thin line of wary expectation. 

"No shit," Bucky says, exhaling heavily. He slumps and grinds the heel of his palm against his forehead. After a second, his chest hitches with silent, exhausted laughter. "You couldn't just say _Peggy Carter's perfume_ or _some omega farmgirl I saw on patrol_ , you—" 

"I'm sorry if I handled it badly. I wasn't thinking very clearly." He looks less afraid, now that Bucky's laughing, but even more unsure. 

"Yeah, I'm sorry too. I kinda barged in here and shoved my hand down your pants." 

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you that you triggered it," Steve says, still quiet and grave. 

"We're just all kinds of sorry, aren't we? Couple of sad sacks. Or are we just saying it?" Steve cocks his head at him, and Bucky smirks. "I'm not actually sorry I shoved my hand down your pants, for the record." 

Steve smiles, the smile that looks mostly the same as it used to even now that he's got a movie star's jaw, and the tension in his shoulders dissipates some. "Well, I _am_ sorry I didn't tell you. Seems rude to sleep with a guy and leave that kind of information out." 

Bucky'll think about what it means that he brought on Steve's rut later. Right now, he's content to drape an arm around Steve's shoulder and knock their sides together, take a deep breath that alleviates the squeeze of tension he's been carrying around since the day before. Steve gives him another goofy grin, and their closeness is charged now, but the immediate relief is more important. 

\--

A few days later, when Steve's driving a truck back to base for more supplies, Bucky goes with him and sits shotgun. Dum Dum's in the back, smoking cigars they can smell in the cab. 

He has the self-restraint to wait until they're miles away from enemy lines, as far away from danger as they get nowadays, to put his hand on the firm inside of Steve's thigh. 

"How soon can I get you in rut again?" he asks, rough and low just in case Dum Dum might hear. 

Steve's knuckles squeeze the steering wheel, and he shoots Bucky a look of utter disbelief even as Bucky's tracing the seam of his pants. "Jesus, Buck," he says, and Steve Rogers blaspheming is so funny Bucky cackles and drops his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> (For the record, in no way do I advocate for using petroleum jelly as lube.)
> 
> Come haunt me on tumblr if you want: amareiohannes.tumblr.com


End file.
